


Courage of Conviction

by icarus_chained



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotions, Episode Tag, Fear, Friendship/Love, Gen, Humor, Loss of Control, Past Violence, Protectiveness, Sacrifice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-21
Updated: 2014-06-21
Packaged: 2018-02-05 14:21:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1821583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of Sarpeidon, Spock and McCoy have a conversation about McCoy's tendency to prod Spock into excess emotionality and why that really mightn't end well. McCoy understands that, he does, but that doesn't mean he thinks he ought to back down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Courage of Conviction

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the aftermath of "All Our Yesterdays", otherwise known as the episode in which Spock & McCoy are stuck 5000 years in a planet's past, Spock begins to revert to his more savage Vulcan ancestors, and McCoy deliberately prods him into almost strangling the doctor to death to make him realise this. There were times when McCoy showed a distinct lack of survival instinct -_-;

"I wonder about you sometimes, Doctor."

McCoy blinked, startled out of what had been a more or less companionable silence, and stared across the cabin at Spock. Nonplussed, and perhaps a little wary. It had been a trying week, after all. Plenty for a Vulcan to get his logic in a twist over, and his emotions along with it. Not that said Vulcan would ever admit to that latter part.

"You wonder about _me_?" he repeated, only mildly incredulous. "What's to wonder? Nothing complicated over here."

Spock's lip twitched. Not a smile. Heaven's no, couldn't have that. But it moved, and McCoy damn well saw it. "I did not say the matter was complicated," he demurred, and on anyone else that blasted look would be a smirk. "Merely ... inexplicable."

"... Inexplicable, huh?" McCoy could see where this was going. He blew out a breath, nettled. "If this is another diatribe on my illogical human emotionality, Spock, I'll stop you right there. I'm not in the mood."

Spock did that thing with his eyebrow, that oh-so-eloquent look of askance, but he also sobered a bit, dropped the mocking edge, and that was enough to mollify a little. A _very_ little. Just enough to be going on with.

"Not _your_ emotionality, no," he said, more softly now. Serious, watching McCoy across the cabin with all the placid intensity of a star. McCoy blinked at him some. "It is your persistent desire to experience _my_ emotionality that I wonder about, Doctor." A short pause, and then: "Especially as I am recently reminded of how often you bear the brunt of it."

McCoy twitched, surprised. Not by the reminder, necessarily. Sarpeidon was only just behind them, after all. He'd just been thinking about it himself, and Spock as well. No, it was that Spock was apparently gonna _mention_ it that surprised him. And more, that Spock was, what, feeling guilty? Oh, not now. Not on your life.

He sat upright, pulling himself up out of his lackadaisical sprawl, grunting in the process. Damn him, he was getting too old to be stuck on ice planets anymore. But he pulled himself to something approximating attention on his bunk, and stuck out a finger in Spock's direction. Spock only blinked at him, unimpressed.

"You stop that," McCoy instructed sternly. Impaired a little, perhaps, by the obvious effect his nightcap was having on him, but determined regardless. "Whatever's goin' on in that Vulcan head of yours, you can stop it right now. There was no brunt of anything, alright? It was five thousand years ago, like you said. Done and dusted. You don't get to have it both ways."

Spock smiled slightly. It was very far from a happy expression. "Why not? You often seem to, and I have a better excuse than you. I am a hybrid. If anyone should get to have both parts, why not I?"

McCoy opened his mouth, and then closed it again. That was ... more bitter than usual. And more pointed, too. 

"... This is really getting to you, isn't it?" he asked at last. Carefully, leaning sideways to put his glass on his bedside table, the better to give Spock his full attention. "What happened down there. With Zarabeth. With me. It's really bugging you."

Spock grimaced. "That is not ... how I would phrase the matter."

"Maybe not. But it's the general shape of things, isn't it?" McCoy leaned forward, squinting carefully at the man. "Alright then, Mr Spock. Lay it on me. What is it about what happened in that cave that's got you so upset, huh? You weren't yourself. There ain't nothin' you can be blamed for, and probably a great deal that _I_ can. So what's got you all in a twist?" 

Spock stood, a trifle unsteadily, his lips pressed tightly together. McCoy watched him do it, watched him pace carefully across the cabin. Two, three steps at a time. Careful, precise, unhurried. Except for the fact that he shouldn't be doing it at all. Except for the fact that Spock was _pacing_ , and trying to pretend to be calm about it. Boy, oh boy. Not good, no. 

"What do you find so necessary about emotion?" the man asked at last, coming about to stand vibrating over the bunk, and thus McCoy. His expression was carefully calm, almost rigid, but the strain was visibly running through him. "What do you find so necessary about _mine_? Have you not learned by now that it is dangerous? My losses of control have cost both you and the Captain before this, and will again if allowed. And yet you constantly--"

He broke off, shook himself as if to forcibly dispel the strength of his emotion, and McCoy flat stared at him. At the anger there, the pain. Perhaps Spock wasn't quite all back from the past, after all. Or perhaps it was simply that one step too many, the proverbial last straw, and it was only his usual control that had snapped, just a little bit, in the aftermath. Either way, though. The emotions of five thousand years in the past were apparently still alive and well, and had brought some more modern cousins along with them. 

He looked down, rubbing at his cheek a little, and let his shoulders slump. Spock twitched, aggravated, and McCoy looked back up at him long enough to twitch his head sideways and gesture at the bunk beside him.

"Sit down, Spock," he said, and put a glare with it when Spock looked ready to balk. "No buts! Sit the hell down, 'cause I reckon we're gonna be here for a while, and I'm not gettin' a crick in the neck starin' up at you in the process. Alright?"

Spock glared back, rigid and immobile for one extremely long second, enough that McCoy wondered idly if they were actually gonna fight about it, and then ... Then he didn't so much capitulate as deflate, and unbent enough to lower himself onto the bunk, his shoulder pressed almost to McCoy's own.

"There ya go," McCoy murmured softly. "Wasn't so hard, was it?" He shook his head, forestalling a testy response. "Don't answer that. I'm bein' an ass, and I'm sorry."

Spock blinked, but untensed some more. "It would appear you are not alone in that at present," he observed wryly, and quirked that lip again at McCoy's soft snort. "I should not have started this conversation. I simply ... I find myself perturbed. And I am having more difficulty than I should in ameliorating it."

"I can see that," McCoy agreed, a little wry himself. "Ain't seen you this out of sorts since ... Hell, I don't know. Your marriage-that-wasn't, maybe. Or your father's illness. It's been a while, either way."

"Yes," Spock murmured, repressively. "And neither of those were my finest moments either. Do you not understand my concern, then?"

McCoy looked at him. "Your concern that you've lost your cool?" he asked quietly. "Or your concern that it usually happens when emotion is forced from you, and other people tend to end up paying the price?"

Spock stilled, a very blank expression filtering over his features. Deliberately so. The last grasp for control, McCoy thought, and desperate with it. 

"Both," the Vulcan responded. Curtly, perhaps, but not from temper. "And more the latter. Doctor ..." 

"There's a reason for that, you know," McCoy cut him off, clipped and deliberate himself. Running right over any potential objections. "There's a reason why it hurts people when you can't control it, when it's _forced_ from you. That ain't the kind of emotion I'm lookin' for in you. Never has been. I would ... I'd've hoped you'd figured that out, by now. I've never been lookin' to force you."

Spock started to answer, and then stopped briefly. Paused, very carefully. 

"It is ... at times very difficult to see that," he said finally. Stoic in the face of McCoy's flinch, if perhaps only barely. "You demand emotion at every turn, Doctor. Often when I can least afford it. Often when _you_ can least afford it. It is difficult not to see that as an attempt to force it from me."

McCoy winced, faintly sick. He brought his hand up, pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose to ward off the nausea. A moment. Only a moment. He needed to hold on that bit longer. Spock stayed silent. Patient as bedrock, or as a Vulcan who's already said his piece. McCoy smiled crookedly, no more happy than Spock's had been earlier, and raised his head to look back at him.

"It wasn't like that," he said. "Or at least ... it wasn't _intended_ like that. Not like Sarpeidon. Or the Platonians. Or the ... the Pon Farr, whatever you called it. I wasn't aiming to pull something unnatural up. I just wanted to see what was already there. For you to, I don't know, acknowledge it. Maybe even pretend. I don't know. I just need you to _react_ sometimes. Show me what you felt. Show me that you _did_."

Spock was silent for a moment. And then: "I am not human, Doctor," he reminded softly. Almost gently. "Or not only, at least. My father's logic is not less valuable than my mother's passion. You said I cannot have it both ways. So has everyone else. And they all, I think, will believe that I have chosen wrongly regardless."

"It ain't--!" He stopped, pulled back. Tried again. "It ain't that I think you've chosen wrongly. It ain't that I think you've gotta be just like me. Hell, Spock, there are times when _I_ don't want to be like me! Lots of 'em!" He shook his head, shook that off. "It's just you're always so afraid to feel. So, so _ashamed_ , maybe. I don't like seeing that. You can't make it go away by pretending it ain't there. Trust me, I've tried. There probably ain't a single one of us emotional humans who ain't."

Spock shook his head. "It is not about denial. It is about acceptance. Control. I do not attempt to replace emotion with logic, merely to constrain the one within the other."

McCoy cocked an eyebrow at him, and considered it an eloquent gesture himself. "You sure about that?" he asked, maybe a little pointedly. "You really sure you always know the difference? Because I have to tell you, Spock, sometimes from out here it don't look like it."

And wasn't the silence after that one more than a little telling, he thought. Wasn't that silence more than a little pointed itself.

"... It is dangerous," Spock said again, after a moment. Almost inaudibly, with a distant expression that told McCoy that he was somewhere else right now. Probably back in Sarpeidon's past, with a hand around McCoy's throat. Or back on Vulcan, with Jim's body beneath him. Or on that other Enterprise ... no, no, that hadn't been him, that'd been the other one. That one, at least, hadn't been _Spock's_ loss of control.

Though maybe he had a point, McCoy reflected gingerly, fingers drifting up unconsciously to trace his throat and up over his jaw, towards the psi point at his temple. Maybe Spock had a point about danger. Poking Vulcans didn't usually end well for anyone, and McCoy least of all. He probably ought to have learned that by now, yes.

But still. Still. Damned and all if it mattered in the end. Damned and all if it actually _stopped_ him. Sometimes you just had to stick your hand in the bear trap, and live with the consequences afterwards.

"It's dangerous when it's forced out of you," he answered, staring distantly himself, leaning heavier on Spock's shoulder. "It's dangerous when you're in biochemical crisis, or bein' messed around with by gods, or bein' dumped back to your primitive roots all unwilling. I'm not denying that part. But Spock, you really think I'd poke you if I honestly thought you were gonna hurt me for it? You think I'd argue with you or needle at ya if I was _afraid_ of you? Not drugged you, or hijacked you, but _you_ you. When you're fully compos mentis and one hundred percent yourself. You really think I'd poke you if I was scared of you then?"

For some reason, Spock smiled slightly at that. Wry and tired and oh so very eloquent. McCoy blinked at him. Stared.

"Doctor," he said, bright and extremely heavy, "you have 'poked me', as you put it, _when_ I am drugged, or possessed, or reverting to primitive. You poked me deliberately in order to prove to me that was the case, less than seventy hours ago. The fact that I might well have killed you for it did not seem to give you pause. In fact ... I would perhaps go so far as to say that you are far more likely to poke things that frighten you. It is one of your more extremely illogical traits."

McCoy spluttered at him. "What? That's not-- I do no so thing! You're thinking of Jim. _He's_ the foolhardy one. I'm the one with the sense God gave a goose, who has to step in to put you two idiots the hell back together afterwards."

By rights, Spock ought to have laughed at him for that. Not because he'd have been _right_ to, of course, not because it would have been fitting, but because that was the cue for it. That was the cue for the little needles and scoffs they sent each other, the arguments that meant things were right between them. A good splutter of outrage, a snide little comment here or there, and all would've been well. That was the way it went. Or the way it was _supposed_ to go.

Not tonight. Close maybe, for a second there Spock looked like he was going to roll with it, going to let the weight of the conversation go, but ... No. Not tonight. Spock sobered, instead, though there was still a hint of a smile about his mouth. A hint of lightness there, despite the still-serious tone.

"Jim does his share," he agreed, looking at McCoy somewhat oddly. Something too weird and repressed and bloody Vulcan for McCoy to get a hold of. "He's borne the brunt of enough anger, mine and otherwise. He is not alone, however, Doctor. You do not fight as he does. You don't throw yourself into the breach the same way. But you have a certain defiance about you. You always have. You test your convictions with your life, and I have yet to see you back down in the face of fear. It is ... admirable. And it is also thoroughly alarming."

McCoy just blinked at him, stupefied. "What the--?"

"It is not only that I do not fully trust myself with your safety," Spock went on, shifting to face him fully, to meet his eyes head on. "It is that I do not fully trust _you_ with your safety. You would challenge me if you feared me, yes. I do not simply believe that, I know it for fact. For my sake, if you thought it would help me, you would embrace almost any harm, the same as you would embrace if for Jim, or for anyone. You are, and always have been, relentlessly self-sacrificing, Doctor. You would die for any one of us in a heartbeat, if you thought it would help. Don't even think to deny it."

"I don't ... I mean, of course not. What? Spock, what's that got to do with anything. I'd die for any one of you, and you for me. That don't mean ... that doesn't mean I'm not _safe_. That doesn't mean I'm scared of you, what the hell?"

Except it did. Or could. Maybe. He could maybe see what Spock was getting at, a little. Because he'd done it, hadn't he. He'd been scared of Spock, and done shit anyway. He'd poked what he'd honestly believed to be a Vulcan well on the way to regressing into barbarity, just to wake him up. For the same reason he couldn't always tell if Spock was trying to control his emotions or just pretend they didn't exist, maybe Spock couldn't always tell if McCoy was poking him because he _trusted_ him, or just because he loved him and was going to do what was good for him no matter the cost to himself.

And maybe, if you'd seen your emotions burst out and almost kill people a time or two, maybe that would really start to worry you. Maybe that thought might honestly frighten you, when you couldn't be sure which emotions were safe to let out and which would get people killed, and the damned stubborn bastard wouldn't stop _poking_ you long enough to let you figure it out.

Maybe, just maybe, Spock might have a right to be concerned here.

"I have seen you die for me, Doctor," Spock went on, watching him steadily. That 'intensity of a star' impression again. Unmovable, but not necessarily unmoved. "I have seen you risk your life more times than I have cared to. You struck down both your commanding officers in order to offer yourself to torture in their place. You deliberately angered a primitive Vulcan in order to remind him of himself. In another universe, you cut yourself off from your allies and risked torture and death simply because you could not let even my _counterpart_ perish. You won't fight. You cannot bear to bring harm. So you offer yourself instead. If someone is going to be hurt, you do everything you can to ensure that it is you before anyone else. If you are afraid, you dare your enemy to hurt you, and hope that in the process they will forget to hurt someone else. I have _watched_ you. I have seen you do this, over and over again. It has never failed to terrify me."

"I--" McCoy started, and then gave up. He couldn't. What could he say? It wasn't more than the truth, after all.

"I am afraid," Spock said, very gently. "I am afraid to be the thing that hurts you. I have been in the past. The very recent past. I have been used as a weapon against you and against Jim many more times than I would like. Even once is too much. And yet it does not stop you. Either of you. My counterpart tore your mind open, I myself have almost killed you, for one terrible interlude I believed I had killed Jim. And even then, it was you who prevented that. The both of you, allowing me to kill him, to kill you by proxy, in order to save _me_. I do not ... I do not like being so used, and so saved. Can you not understand that?"

He could. He really, really could, because Spock had done more than a bit of sacrificing himself to save them over the years, and Jim as well. He could so easily understand that fear. But he couldn't ... he couldn't stand aside, he couldn't back off. That'd just let the fear win. That'd just be _giving up_.

"I'm not afraid of you," he said, and damned if it didn't come out hoarse. Damned if it didn't have a crack right down the middle of it. "You can kill me as many times as you like, Spock, and I'll still not be afraid of you. You don't _want_ to. You don't want to hurt me. Every single time, they've had to screw with you to make you do it. They've had to break you, to control you, to strip you of your right mind. You didn't ever hurt me in your right mind, and I ain't gonna be afraid of you until you do."

A strange expression flickered over Spock's face. Something between relief and an exhausted pain, McCoy thought. Caught between two worlds, having it both ways, and only more exhausted for it. Huh.

"Could you _pretend_ to be?" he asked, with an odd sort of humour, but a familiar one. "Enough for some caution on occasion, at least? I'm strong enough to kill you, Doctor, but not to fight you forever, and myself as well at the same time. You are ... quite tiring, when you put your mind to it. For the sake of my fear, if not for yours, do you think you could try to poke me a little less often?"

McCoy ducked his head, a slightly strained smile flickering over his own features. An odd humour, but a familiar one. Yes. "You're sayin' you can't keep up with me, is that it?" 

Spock smirked faintly. "Not at all. I am saying that, in light of the fact that you have only been fighting on one front while I have fought on two, it is obviously proof of my superiority that I have managed to hold my own for so long. However ..."

" _However_ ," McCoy agreed, with an evil sort of smirk. Spock gave him the stink eye, and something hiccupped in his chest for the sight of it, after the rollercoaster of emotion of the previous half hour. "However, despite your obvious superiority, you're feelin' the need for a bit of a rest right now, yes? Just goes to show, like my Daddy always said. Endurance'll win you more points than strength in the long run. Guess the old man was right."

There was a flash of something, then. Something altogether odd in the man's expression, something McCoy instinctively shied away from. Not anger. He'd never backed away from anger in his life. Something worse, something more terrifying by far, something he'd never been able to face without fear.

Love. Wry, exasperated, but all the more real for that. A desperate, almost helpless sort of affection in the Vulcan's eyes, like McCoy was some impossible, infinitely aggravating thing that Spock would nonetheless die for, every goddamn time it was asked. Something, some _one_ , that Spock would cheerfully thrown himself into harm for, and count it worth every wound.

Damn it. Damn it all anyways.

"I'm not sure it is endurance, in your case," Spock said lightly, a hum of mischief and something deeper, something warmer, in his voice. "Though you have ... endured a great deal. More than might be fairly expected of you. But still. Perhaps, Doctor, from you that might be considered less endurance, and more obduracy?"

That took him a second, took him a minute to parse, but when it did McCoy felt a slow, delighted sort of grin slip across his face, the better to match the sneaky little smirk on Spock's.

"Mr Spock," he said, sweet as honey and cheerfully vicious, "are you accusing me of being too cussed stubborn to back down?"

"Doctor, I assure you that is not an accusation. It is a statement of fact."

Well _yes_ , McCoy thought. Yes, it damn well was. And a damned good thing, too, or they'd all have been dead long since. Around here, a man needed stubborn just to keep people in one piece for more than an hour at a time, and that was a fact too.

But then ... maybe sometimes a man oughta try something a little different once in a while. Stubborn where strength failed, and maybe a little compassion where stubborn only made things worse.

"I'll tell you what, Mr Spock," he said, slow and thoughtful enough to be worrying, judging by the look on Spock's face. "I'll make you a deal. I'll trade you a bit less of me being doggone stubborn at the wrong moments, if you'll trade me a bit more of you being honest emotional at the _right_ ones. Just a little bit. Here or there." He smiled crookedly, shrugged. "And maybe we can manage to work something out between us, or die trying, huh?"

Spock blinked at him. That eyebrow, that damned eloquent arch of it, but at least the bastard was smiling along with it. Faint and more than a touch mocking, but still.

"By all accounts, Doctor, we ought to have died trying quite some time ago, and under considerably less favourable circumstances." He held out a hand, wry and relieved when McCoy took it. "I doubt it will cause us any undue harm to try some more, then."

McCoy snickered tiredly. "That's the spirit," he agreed. "Can't hurt to try. That ought to safely jinx us through 'til the end of the five year mission at least."

Spock shrugged, serene agreement and not in the least perturbed.

"One can only hope, Doctor McCoy."

One can only hope.

**Author's Note:**

> Set after "All Our Yesterdays", references "Amok Time", "Mirror Mirror" and "The Empath", with fleeting references to "Plato's Stepchildren" and "Journey to Babel". No, I don't have a list of episodes with awesome Spock/McCoy moments, why do you ask?


End file.
